I realized today that I just report the facts. No mean feat considering just the facts are so emotional too. I gloss over so much, even then it hurts.

My first d-day. Some would call it c-day. Confession over discovery. It’s a d-day to me. Devastating. Demoralizing. Dream-shattering. It was only a confession day because Sorry decided to force MrJJ’s hand. “Tell her or I’ll tell her in the most hurtful way possible.” What could hurt more than knowing your prince, your happily-ever-after, your man of honor loved someone else? That someone else was your friend?

I’ve written about it here before, that day. As I write it this time, iTunes has shuffled a song called “Friends and Love” into the playlist. I can’t even remember where it came from, it’s beautiful. Friends and love should be beautiful. This friend, this love…not beautiful.

Watching one of those spy movies recently, I was wondering why I triggered. The woman was trying to escape someone, going in and out of buildings. I’ve done that. Not life or death, but as it turned out, a part of me died that day.

I sat in the floor of my closet, crying. I felt frumpy. She made me feel frumpy with her little comments, though I did not connect that until later. MrJJ stood over me, angry. What was my problem? Please, please let’s go out…but not with her. Just us two. Just this once, I begged.
We already invited her, she’s been having a hard time, you know that. You’re holding us up. It was a sneer, a disdain in the reply. I imagine that he also said they’d go without me and I bustled, but that might not be the truth. It would fit with the whole picture.

We went to Denny’s. I can’t remember ordering. I can’t remember anything but sitting next to the window, the morning sun streaming in. I think MrJJ sat next to me, but I couldn’t swear to it. There was some movement under the table. The wait for the food was forever, each moment a torment as we all just sat there. I don’t think I talked, all my memories come later. The movement under the table clicked something in me and I got up and left.

The town wasn’t built up in that area yet. The black roads and drying fields yawned ahead of me. Everything seemed too bright to have shape. I hurried away, tears blurring things even more. Half a block down, I see they have gotten in the Jeep to follow me. I ducked into a Hardees, only to be told I’m sorry, we’re closed for renovation. I look down at what looks like a Carl’s Jr. star. Huge and waiting to be hung. I was confused- those are from when I lived in California as a child, not here in rural NC. I stumbled out of the door and walked as fast as I could to the next building. A hotel.

The confused faces of the staff blurred past me as I rushed upstairs, down the hall. I wanted to hide, there was nowhere to hide, just the maroon carpet and shut door. So I went down the other stairs, two flights of stark tan walls and stairs. I couldn’t even find an ice machine to hide behind. I rushed out, hoping MrJJ and Sorry were looking somewhere else.

There they were, in the parking lot. I ran to the back of the hotel, hoping to escape there. The deep and wide ditch stopped me. There was nothing but a wide dying field ahead of me. No cover. As I teetered on the edge of the ditch, MrJJ came to me, pulled me to him and hugged me. Kissed the top of my head. Promised me he loved me and it would all be ok.

MrJJ walked me to the Jeep, put me in, buckled me up and I leaned my head against the window, crying. When we pulled into our apartments, I begged him to drop her off at home. She couldn’t stay here. Of course she wasn’t staying, he said, I’m dropping her off. Then do it, don’t leave me alone. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back, I love you.

It felt like forever. This was before cell phones were ubiquitous. No choice but to wait. I don’t know why I didn’t call her house. I finally couldn’t take the torture. I gather all the pills in the house and some wine coolers. I got into my car, intending to drive down a long country road, take the pills with coolers and stuff the tailpipe of the car. Let someone find me, just let the pain go away. I got to the nearby community college and suddenly felt I had to turn around.

It turns out that they were there, in a gazebo. Thought I had seen them. That’s the only reason MrJJ came home soon after I got home. The rest…well, i can be read here.

I was left to die or not. I can feel the summer day almost like you can feel Maximus’ hand over the field in Gladiator. The same colors, same surreal reality. Five days before my birthday and I’m left behind like the leftover filled Styrofoam boxes from Denny’s. By the time my birthday rolled around, celebrating my life was as unwanted as those leftovers. I was closer to death, slowly dying. I can see the wires protruding from the new Hardee’s sign. I can feel a blur of diners around me in Denny’s.

This happened June 19, 1999. We buried it all almost immediately. The last year of a millennium, and here we are on the cusp of a new decade in the new millennium and I can still remember. Even buried, it was STILL there. If it won’t go away, how do I move away from it. I can’t randomly delete it. Those feelings, they come back. It’s a PTSD thing. The first time I saw a Hardee’s after the second affair came to light, I triggered. I didn’t know what it is, or what it was called at the time, but it was there.
Now I’m supposed to recover? HOW? How do you forget when you’ve tried so hard and it WON’T GO AWAY? How do you heal sleeping next to the person who hurt you, let you hurt but won’t let you go- and won’t help you fight the demons he gave birth to in your dreams, in your life?

I was reading an affair recovery book today. The author said something along the lines that betrayed spouses have to take an account of what they did to make the marriage an environment that an affair could happen in. Like so many of us involved in affair recovery be stressed that the choice to have an affair was solely in the lap of the wayward spouse.

This began the wheels of my mind, circling over and over. I have read time and again the affair is 100% the choice of the unfaithful but the problems in the marriage are 50/50. Some people, like this author I was reading make it sound as though the betrayed could have taken preventative measures though.

The fact is a spouse that is broken enough to cheat will cheat. I have seen many betrayed spouses reporting that their marriage history was re-written and they were villianized (certainly true in my case). Then there are the other spouses that claim, “You were too perfect. I felt I didn’t deserve you.”

To me this is a prime example of how a person that is going to cheat will cheat no matter what. Will justify mo matter what. I need to know that because for years I tried to fix our marriage only to be ignored until one foot was out the door. I tried. You can only get so far alone.

What percentage is it when the betrayed had actually tried? Does it even matter? Because many times it would have happened no matter what. Whether you were ‘too good’ or ‘always unloving.’ Anything could mean an affair to a spouse willing to ignore their vows.

Sunday morning, MrJJ encouraged me to go to one of the churches I had picked out to try. I felt lonely every time I went alone. After the day before, I had hope and wanted to be close to him. Instead, he spent the day cleaning up his study, listening to a Hawaiian radio station streaming live through his computer. I’d pop in now and then only to be brushed off. Pretty soon, it was only the kids that went in to greet MrJJ now and then.

Sometime in the late afternoon, MrJJ went upstairs to go to the bathroom. He thought I was taking a nap. Urged by some inner sense, I went into his now clean study and touched his computer. The Hawaiian music was still playing as I went to the Hotmail site I had noticed weeks before. Unlike the last time, this time it allowed me to log on. All the emails were from one person, a woman named Harlot.

Shaking, I forwarded all the emails sent and received. MrJJ had learned from the AOL incident and this time had deleted all emails as they came in and went out. The exception was that day. Harlot happened to be online at the same time as MrJJ and they volleyed emails back and forth while he hid from his family under the guise of cleaning.

My heart was in my throat as I feverishly moved my evidence to my email account, then ran to my computer and changed my password. My vision began blurring, I was dizzy. I checked MrJJ’s email one more time and reeled, reading his email to her about how watching the movie “Click” the night before was making him reevaluate what was important in life.

I tried to hold it in, but I rushed upstairs. Throwing open the bathroom door, I shot out, “I know about her!”

“Her? Her who? There is no one!”

“Harlot ***” I answered, putting as much sarcasm and disgust as I could into her full name.

“Oh, you have it wrong, we’re just friends.”

“‘Every time you are with me instead of your kids, I am thankful.'” I sneered the quote from her recent email.

His normally tan face blanched, I could swear it did at least. I supposed it was good he was on the throne, he likely needed it.

“Just a minute, we need to talk.”

I agitatedly left, allowing him to clean up. He came into our bedroom and closed the door. I was calm, eerily calm. He confessed to an affair with Harlot. It had only been going on a little while, he claimed. They had sex once, a few weeks ago. Shocked that MrJJ admitted to sex with Harlot, I asked if he had had sex with Sorry all those years ago. I got a strenuous denial.

He did it because I was depressed and didn’t bother to get help, he said. MrJJ was tired of me and so sought someone who did not have the drama of me.

We talked, who knows how long. I don’t even know what the kids were up to at that point, likely watching t.v. We took a break. I know now that he likely contacted her during that break, though he claims now he can’t remember. We talked more when the kids were in bed. I revealed how I had put all the blame on myself for our distance. I had shopped for sex toys, our first ever. By the time they came he had rejected me so often, I just packed them away. I was trying to be who he seemed to want. I was searching for answers, never knowing that the problem was something I couldn’t have changed.

Every loving action, every attempt at growing closer, was twisted by him. Or, if he shared it with her, she found a way to twist it. I was fighting a losing battle, one I did not even know I was in.

He promised to ‘take a break’ from her so he could concentrate on our marriage and family. So he could decide without undue influence. I fell into his arms. I don’t know why. I had always said I would leave if it happened again. Here it was, worse than before. Yet I yearned for him. We had passionate sex that night. What I now know is termed as ‘hysterical bonding’. That dual need to feel wanted and to claim your territory. At the time, it was so uplifting.

I came to regret it later.

I had had my d-day. Discovery day. Unbeknownst to me, I was yet again on the early discovery ride. Stops include rounds of trickle truth, minimizing, blame-shifting, gas-lighting, fence-sitting, and (as I found out later) cake-eating. I will explain all of those in the next posts. If you are a betrayed spouse, or suspect you are, I highly recommend checking out some of my links. Each affair is different, but they all follow the same script. Leonardo DiCaprio may have played a modern Romeo, swords may have been replaced with guns, but the lines were still the same. So it is with affair partners.

“I love you but I’m not in love with you.”

“We’re just friends.”

“It was only a kiss.”

“It was just the one time.”

“We used protection.”

“You drove me to it.”

“We’re soul mates.”

“You never understood me like this.”

All to excuse the inexcusable. Each time, each word, each careless phrase, is a bomb into the betrayed heart. Everything will be said to protect the affair and its participants, no matter that the betrayed will be obliterated until our tears feel like they are rivers of blood.

Each d-day is its own pain, own destruction. I am two years away from the one I share here and my heart still quakes reliving it. I can go to that day in June ’99 and feel the utter devastation of having the man I love tell me he loved my friend. It is like an emotional time machine. Suddenly I am standing in the doorway to my bedroom and its the first Sunday of December ’06. My husband is telling me that the woman he is seeing is everything I am not. Believe me when I say, there is a mark left on you forever.

My world was invaded, my family facing destruction. Where would we go next?

First, let’s get this straight. I am Christian. I belong to a conservative church. Am I conservative? Yes and no. According to conservatives- more no than yes I am guessing.

I was listening to a radio program (which will remain ‘nameless’) today and the hosts were going on and on about voting about gay marriage. Marriage should be between a man and a woman you see.

Biblical principles aside, as I have yet to see a completely convincing argument, homosexual marriage is hardly the death knell to the traditional family. Infidelity and its growing acceptance in society (refer to sites such as Ashley Madison) is far more dangerous than the less than 10% (just throwing a number out here) of the population that happens to be queer and also want to get married.

When current estimates put infidelity rates somewhere between 50 and 85%, I believe that reveals a much larger risk to the traditional family. Infidelity leaves a footprint on the family that is not easily washed away. Even many experts do not understand the psychology of an affair- and recovery from affairs. Infidelity carries it’s damage into the next generation. I would say that most people on the support forums I have visited were children in a house that was affected by infidelity. How it plays out usually depends on the gender of the wayward parent and the gender of the child. I wish I could remember the study I once saw quoted, but I am pretty sure a daughter of a betrayed wife is more likely to also be a betrayed wife. Also, the son of a cheating father is more likely to cheat. In my case, P.’s father was a serial adulterer. I recently learned that his mother likely also cheated, if not on P’s father then on the fiance she had after the divorce. My mother cheated often. The three times I know about include the final other man, one of my dad’s friends and one of my mom’s friends…yes, a female.

The legacy can be crippling. There are also real life “Fatal Attraction” scenarios, some to differing degrees. If you are tempted to cheat, even if you are not the spouse be aware of the high emotions that run through a betrayed spouse after discovery. Though I am more prone to self harm, at one point I had a vivid vision of confronting the other woman and stabbing her with a screwdriver. It scared me, but what about the spouses that it motivates?

In geometry a triangle is the strongest shape. In love, it usually means at least one person is unbalanced. You are taking a risk when you create that unbalance. The papers are littered with any person involved in an affair- the other person, the wayward and the betrayed, snapping and committing a crime.

This brings me back to my point. If we want to protect the family institution, we should legislate the breaking of a marriage contract. Infidelity increases the occurrences of STDs (after all, your ‘soul mate’ can’t possibly be ‘unclean’ so why use protection?), children born outside of the marriage, emotional abuse (by its very nature affairs are emotional abuse) and divorce. When we signed our marriage license, we signed a contract and it should be treated as such.

So please, let’s not focus on the fags. Leave them alone if you want to preserve the image of family. Go after the infidels…the cheaters. Those that help a spouse break their vows. The companies like AM and the ‘alibi’ company that promote it. This is a much more insidious issue. It affects Christian couples as much as anyone else. There is definite harm…and definite strictures against it in the Bible.

My guess is this is such a shameful topic that nobody wants to touch it. That and politicians, not known for their fidelity, don’t feel the burning desire to pass such brave legislation.

Though, keeping on the course a wayward is on, one is bound to feel something burning eventually.

I posted this today on a support board and felt I should share it here.

Betrayed Spouses Bill of RightsIn a world where a marriage is as likely to end as not, we sometimes forget what a partnership is in the early days after discovery of infidelity. We lose ourselves in the desperation to hold onto your loved one. Remembering your rights will help you no matter which path your marriage takes.

1- You have a right to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. By having an affair, your spouse has closed off the relationship with you and opened one with the OP (other person). You have a right to insist this is reversed for your healing and to assure that loyalties have been realigned.

2- You have the right to trust- but verify. Trust has been broken, ‘snooping’ is not snooping. It is verifying that someone proven to be a liar, sneak and cheat has changed their ways. Like an addict, a WS(wayward spouse) will often go back to their emotional fix. You have a right to verify this is not happening.

3- You have the right to insist there are only two people in the marriage. That choice was made when you made vows to each other. Even a moment with a third person is too much. You owe your WS no time to ‘think about it’. There’s a marriage or there’s none.

4- You have a right to know who the OP is, the flip of this is you do not have a right to harm or harass this person. Hold yourself to a better standard than the OP did.

5- You have the right to choose to give the gift of reconciliation or to divorce. You have the right to take some time to make that choice. If you one day realize you cannot live with the truth of what has been done, you have the right to walk away.

6- You have the right to insist your WS gets STD testing done and to see the results. Even if the WS claims it has not gotten physical, as many WSs will admit to “only a kiss” when it has gone much further.

7- You have the right to insist that your WS initiates and honors NC (no contact) immediately. You have a right to have input and to be a witness to how NC is established.

8- You have a right to set and enforce boundaries. This is not blackmail or any of the other negative words your WS might use. This you protecting yourself.

9- You have a right to hold onto evidence for as long as you need it to feel safe. Your WS has created an atmosphere of risk and danger. It is natural to have a safety net to counteract what has been brought into your marriage.

10- You have a right to know who your WS’s friends are and the nature of their interactions. If it is kept a secret, it is not healthy for the marriage and therefore something is amiss.

11- You have the right to out the affair to anyone you deem will help you and/or your marriage. This is not your secret to keep, this is not your shame to hold. You owe no protection to those that failed to protect you.

12- You have a right to heal on your timeline. As long as you are making steady progress, you are healing. It is a slow process and a WS that says things along the lines of, “You’ll never get over this!” does not have a full grasp of the damage betrayal causes. This is a healing process that takes from 18 months to five years.

13- You have a right to yell, cry, fall apart and otherwise handle this in any way that relieves some of the devastating pain, shock and loss of trust. Your world has been turned on its end. You do not have the right to physically, verbally or otherwise abuse your spouse.

14- You have the right to insist on a true marriage. A marriage of partners, where you love, honor and protect each other. If you feel your marriage is missing one of these components, either fixing it or leaving are your only two options. You don’t have the right to cheat and/or turn someone else into a betrayed spouse.

15- You have a right to love yourself. Often the betrayed have forgotten themselves as an individual. This is the optimum time to remind yourself that you are unique and lovable in your own right. That as much as you might love your spouse, you should love yourself enough to refuse any sort of mistreatment.

I originally posted this on an infidelity support board, I am reposting it here.

a vent letter to the cheating husbands…or those thinking of cheating.

She’s chasing after you? Giving you coy smiles? Rubbing up against you? Leaning in, filling the air around you with her perfume?

You feel chased after? Wanted? Desired?

You’re not special. You’ve come across a woman that knows how easily men are led around by their egos. She’s feeding her own ego by seeing how easily you become a mass of hormones. She likely throws it out there to anyone, hoping for a bite.

The phone call, the welcoming voice in your ear. Why isn’t you wife like that towards you? Because she already feels safe, secure. Unlike this woman, she’s not seeking something that hasn’t been given to her. She is content with what she has.

You.

If she doesn’t act it, think first…do you always act like a man newly in love towards your wife? Why expect of her what you don’t give?

All for a woman who needed to eat a part of your soul to feed the emptiness that is hers.

If she’s chasing you, it’s because she thinks your an easy mark. People don’t go after rejection. So stop. Think with the head made for that task. Go show your wife some of the attention you crave and it will be returned in ways that hollow woman grasping after you never could.